But they seem pretty clever. I’ve never seen the show America’s Got Talent or even the UK version that I have to assume exists and the original idea was licensed form was licensed from. That’s OK, one good “homage” deserves another. From this clip, it’s apparent that a group of frat boys got together to make their own version of BMG, and it looks surprisingly good.These frat guys are called Defying Gravity. They’re ex-frat guys actually, I guess they dropped out of school to be on the show. I hope it works out for you guys, but you need a new name. I guess it’s at this point that I’m going to need to add some sort of “circus” category, seeing as how this isn’t the first time we’ve had skateboarding mentioned in conjunction with the circus. Defying Gravity takes on a bit of skateboarding in this segment that reminds me a little bit of some of those fingerboarding videos where they skate on turntables with fixed obstacles. – Thanks to Seth Levy for the tip.

Two comics with skateboarding, one is Cyanide & Happiness and the other is from a Imperial Valley, Ca paper, as featured on a crackpot’s blog The Snake on the Flag. Thanks to Boy Ipoh and Ryan Mann.

Two videos, one with a lot of skateboarding, one with about a half a second. The first one is for an Underworld song called Always loved a film. It expands on a concept where old guys act like teenagers. You may remember in 2007 we posted a commercial for something called 118 118 that was pretty much the same deal. It looks like one of the old guys still skates though, he’s not quite as old looking as the rest of them though, but maybe it’s the long hair. I feel like I should know who this guy is. The second is for a defunct outfit called These Animal Men. The song The Sound of the Youth has a great bombastic intro and about 14 frames of a plastic skateboard, in 1994 even. Watch them both, then imagine the first video track playing with the audio soundtrack of the second video. Oh wait, you don’t have to imagine it because I swapped it out myself and uploaded the mashup.

Did anybody see the 2005 remake of Bad News Bears? Anybody? Anybody? I wonder if there is any skateboarding in the movie. I believe skateboarding surpassed baseball in youth practitioner #’s some time in the new millennium, so nowadays if you want to be an individual and be a rebel, you gotta join an organized sports team.

I snapped this photo out the window of my car on the same day I saw another one on a bus bench on my way to work too. This one is a half a mile from Conahan’s house. Before now, I had only seen this image online.

Today’s guest on Callin on Colin is Howard Weiner, owner of one of the longest running skateshops on the West Coast, if not the entire world, Portland’s Cal Skates. Howard has been a fixture in Portland politics for a long time. The picture (above left) is Howard marching on City Hall in 1970. You might recall he briefly ran for Portland City Council. Howard might be the first actual adult that Colin has interviewed. Tune in live via the interwebs at 2pm Pacific, or download the show a couple hours later.

Kelley Deal from The Breeders and Kristian Svitak sing a jingle for Landshark wheels. There was a cool band in Illinois circa 82-83 called the Breeders. They had (among other things) some really good songs like Zen Punk and Uncool Slamming. You can download mp3’s of their 7″ with the band’s blessing from this article on Maximum Rock and Roll.

I saw a whole mess of Toyota marketing money that looked like it was trying to bite Jim Phillips’s style, but it’s probably legit.A quick search for Jim Phillips and Toyota reveals that he appears in a Toyota commercial that airs in Japan, so it’s highly believable that they also hired him to illustrate for the Extreme&trade:! sports market.

July’s eBay Watch is a day later to post because Neil gave it to me on a Sunday, and there is too much good TV on Sunday night. Mad Men, Hung, and True Blood. This is Stephen Moyer, the actor who plays Vampire Bill. He got married to Sookie, I mean Anna Paquin over the weekend, and was spotted the next day on a skateboard. I would have thought he would have been too worn out, but that might explain his big grin. You know, because skateboarding makes you happy. New eBay Watch in about an hour. – Thanks to Mrs Kilwag for the tip. [Source: US Magazine]

My son found this in the kids area at Nordstrom. They hada bunch of single page sheets for kids to color on, some of them were Elmo, but none of the others were for actual product brands.